No VT-d on K series?

[RMSe17]

Why is there VT-d support on 2500 and 2600 but not on the 2500K and 2600K? Also, what kind of impact on VMs will this have? I was going to get the 2500K but now I am not sure

Thanks,
RMSe17

 

[Jumpem]

What is VT-d?

 

[toyota]

What is VT-d?

google

 

[stahlhart]

I'm just curious -- and not trolling or trying to start an argument with anyone -- but what are people doing at home with virtualization that makes hardware support for it such a big deal?

Was this available in earlier, more recent generations of Intel processors?

I'm upgrading from an Athlon XP, so I'm really lost in the woods on this. I went with the 2500K, as I looked at each of the features not there that everyone is bringing up for debate here, and honestly can't state that any of them are a deal-breaker for me.

 

[faxon]

2500k will be an amazingly awesome upgrade, and the lack of VT-d wont affect you at all if you didnt even know what it was for in the first place. well worth the money spent imo

 

[stahlhart]

Yeah, I know it won't affect me, but I'd still like to know... I was just looking for examples of what people are using it for at home.

 

[bryanW1995]

I'd still prefer 2600k for the HT, even though the extra threads don't add up to much in DC for me. on a budget, though, 2500k is definitely the way to go.

 

[combust3r]

An input/output memory management unit (IOMMU) enables guest virtual machines to directly use peripheral devices, such as Ethernet, accelerated graphics cards, and hard-drive controllers, through DMA and interrupt remapping. This is sometimes called PCI passthrough.[29]

Both AMD and Intel have released specifications:

the AMD specification, "AMD-Vi" (previously just IOMMU)
Intel's "Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O" (VT-d)

Nice huh If you don't need PCI passthrough then VT-x will suffice for general vm usage.

 

[mv2devnull]

Was this available in earlier, more recent generations of Intel processors?

Yes, in all of these.

I'm just curious -- and not trolling or trying to start an argument with anyone -- but what are people doing at home with virtualization that makes hardware support for it such a big deal?

What are people doing at home with hardware? Same as what they do with other hardware: polish e-peen. Naturally, no amount of toys is enough for that.

It looks like there are two options on offer to choose from: "work" and "game". The lack of IOMMU is hardly a severe loss in the über-tunable game machine. (I suppose.)


Gosh, I'm slow.

 

[Stuka87]

I find it strange as well that it was left out. Intel has always had this annoying idea of disabling features for various chips. AMD has hardware virtualization on nearly every single chip they sell.

While intel doesn't. You can actually go from a dual core that has VT-d, to a quad core that does not. Which just doesn't make sense.

 

[Sp12]

It really is stupid for it to be disabled.

 

[flexcore]

Ya e-peen. people setting up virtual test environments at home makes them feel big. GTFO. Just because you don't have a clue and don't use it doesn't mean it's not useful to others. Granted it's user base is still very small, but that maybe changing with protected (VE)virtual environments. Think about setting up your web access in VE, limiting anything viral from spreading. Or a VE that has only the very basic core elements of the OS and things needed for gaming. These are just a couple ideas of the top of my head.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

It has VT-x which is way more than any normal user would use for virtualization. You don't need VT-d which is more for data centers.

 

[Voo]

Ah Intel, always trying to segment the market somehow.. at least compared to VT-x you only lose some speed but again completely non thought through ~

 

[busmaster11]

Does anyone have direct experience with VT-d and the need for it running vmware 7.2 workstation? I just got my 2500k today and getting 8 gigs pc1600 for it. Wondering if having it would have been useful. I'm going to play around with esxi hosts and win2008 servers and even a osx system - mostly for fun and experience.

 

[lupi]

google

WOW!!! Intel manage to include google on die.

 

[toyota]

WOW!!! Intel manage to include google on die.

yep and even a pdf on how to use it...

 

[nyker96]

Does anyone have direct experience with VT-d and the need for it running vmware 7.2 workstation? I just got my 2500k today and getting 8 gigs pc1600 for it. Wondering if having it would have been useful. I'm going to play around with esxi hosts and win2008 servers and even a osx system - mostly for fun and experience.

I'm on vmware 7,2, I used to run it on e7200 which has no hardware vm, now on AMD x4 620 which has hardware support, truth be told, both run well but x4 you can tell is quicker slightly. I think for home use, you probably won't notice the difference. although vt-x seems to support hardware VM on IO so I guess anything that uses IO a lot will take a hit w/o it. I really don't know why Intel splits VM features like this, I think nowadays we have so much ram, VM should be a standard feature for everyone. But as long as you got the extra ram, it should run pretty fast for home use.

 

[KronicMag]

I was wondering the same thing, do I need VT-d? I never even knew if I had it on my existing setup. While my Q9300 has vt-d, my chipset does not, so I'm not missing out on anything.

It should come as no surprise that the H67 does not support VT-d, but the P67 does. It also looks like the Q series in the mobile line up does as well.

I found this blog post from May 2010 that gives some guidelines to whether or not you "need" VT-d.

http://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2010/05/13/to-vt-d-or-not-to-vt-d-a-guide-on-whether-to-utilize-direct-device-attach-in-your-virtualized-system/

Someone in another thread also mentioned doing hardware level device driver development as a need/benifit of VT-d.

I'm not going to worry about a lack of VT-d at home since I rather have the unlocked multiplier. Even though I get to build some of the machines i use at work, I never OC there, so I would get the 2500/2600 non-k and get VT-d. Although for what I do at work, I don't need VT-d either.

Maybe this will change in a few years as virtualization continues to mature, but I'll be looking to upgrade again by that time

 

[Harvey]

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but won't VMware impliment virtual machines without VT-d?

If so, I would guess that, with or without built in VT-d on the CPU die, performance would be determined by overall horsepower of the CPU and the amount of RAM available for each virtual machine.

 

[xxsk8er101xx]

It will run perfectly fine unless you're running 200+ virtual machines. In that case you're likely getting a HP superdome anyway so it doesn't matter.

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but won't VMware impliment virtual machines without VT-d?

If so, I would guess that, with or without built in VT-d on the CPU die, performance would be determined by overall horsepower of the CPU and the amount of RAM available for each virtual machine.

 

[nyker96]

I was reading up on this vt-d vt-x business, it looks like vt-x may actually be slightly slower than software VM code, look at this article it explains: and vt-x is equivalent to AMD-V:

http://tombuntu.com/index.php/2007/10/01/should-you-enable-intels-vt-x-in-virtualbox/

 

[mv2devnull]

Excuse me if I'm wrong, but won't VMware impliment virtual machines without VT-d?

VMware calls VT-d "VM DirectPath". It is an optional optimization.

In VT-d/AMD-Vi a virtual guest has a direct and dedicated access to a device. Network card is a typical device; VT-d should decrease the latency and CPU overhead of the network connection of the guest. The host naturally uses a different physical NIC.

I do admit that there is a "VT-d scenario" that could be fun at home. Dedicated graphics card. To run a game in a virtual guest with full graphics. But even at best it would be a bit slower than running on the host OS. Shame on "H67 does not support VT-d", Intel. Why deny us having IGP on host and Nvidia/AMD beast on guest?


VT-x/AMD-V is the base feature for virtualization. VT-x is in the 2600K. It is possible to run a virtual guest without them, like the VirtualBox link shows, but that limits your choice of implementation.


Compared to the HD3000/HD2000 split the VT-d/multiplier segmentation is rather logical.

 

[combust3r]

Shame on "H67 does not support VT-d", Intel. Why deny us having IGP on host and Nvidia/AMD beast on guest?

Where did you get this ? Can you provide a link please ? Thanx.

 

[mv2devnull]

From KronigMag, post #19 on this thread. If he cannot provide a link, then you can blame me for distributing unchecked misinformation.